Ghosts
by ResidentGoth
Summary: The house was too silent, too still. It could never be called peaceful, it never had been, but it was something like that. At the realization, something inside his chest stirred and he felt his throat tighten, though he didn't know why. He could leave right now, and no one would care. **AU from Praxid's Down in the Willow Garden. Written with permission. Daryl/OC.**


_For Praxid. It was her story to begin with. I just made a parallel universe out of it._

When he thought about it, really sat down and thought about it, Daryl realized he didn't want Merle back.

His brother was in one of his moods again, and was sprawled across the couch like some sort of nasty stain that you couldn't get out no matter how hard you scrubbed at it. He was lying there, fidgeting, like he had to piss or was high on something again. Daryl's eyes drifted to the white bag that sat in the center of his brother's chest. He stood next to his bedroom door and realized he was glaring, before making the effort to wipe the emotion from his face.

Merle had been in jail for… how long had it been? Six months? Either way it hadn't been long enough. Living alone had done nicely by Daryl. It was quiet, peaceful even, and he supposed that that was what he liked the most about the arrangement. He had time to himself, to hunt, to work—he had taken to working any jobs he could to get some money. He had hopes of getting away, and never coming back to this rotting shithole house again. There were nights when he would sit at the battered kitchen table, surrounded by truck stop maps of the continental US and a torn-up notebook with plans and savings amounts and a running total of how much cash he'd made in the six months Merle had been gone, scribbled in dark pencil across the page. He kept the money he'd made hidden from Merle; if his brother found it there was no telling what he would waste it on.

Daryl had his eye on a bike in town. A nice bike, to boot. A Triumph he'd seen an ad for in the county paper. He wanted to buy it from the old guy who owned it, and take it with him when he left. He was only going to take what could fit in the saddlebags. Extra accommodations would have to be made for the crossbow, though. But he was willing to invest in that, so it wasn't a big deal.

He decided that he wanted to see the ocean. Couldn't tell himself why, just felt that was what he wanted to do.

He was stuck here though, for the time being at least. The way he saw it, it was only a matter of time before his brother got caught violating his parole again and was put in jail for the next who-knew-how-long. He watched Merle carefully, gauging his actions and lack thereof, before stepping out of the doorway. All he had to do was slip past him and out the door, into the woods.

"Little brother!" Merle was shouting for him. Daryl kept moving, letting the screen door slam shut in his wake.

"Daryl! _Daryl_!"

The spring air was green, fresh and crisp despite the disrepair and decay of the Dixon homeplace and the Tucker house just a little ways away. He could hear them fighting again as he crossed the road and shoved his way past the dense mountain laurels.

As soon as he cleared the road, it was like entering a vacuum. The Tuckers fighting, Merle standing on the porch hollering for him to come back—it all fell away. He tromped through the underbrush and stepped over a stand of pokeberries, before reaching above his head and climbing up the maple tree, settling himself in the large crook near the top, some thirty feet from the ground. He had been sitting up there for a while when he heard what he thought was sobbing and…praying? He looked down, then looked away.

Janie Tucker, Billy Tucker's frail, young little wife, was kneeling in the spring grass and praying. Praying for Jesus to show her the way. She left after a while, and it wasn't until well after dark that Daryl made his way back to the house. He heard a bottle smash against the wall.

Inside the lights were still on and Merle was sprawled out on the floor. He was surrounded by shards of broken bottles and beer stains.

"Don't come when you're called no more, bro. Where you been all day? You done got too good for ol' Merle, now? Bet you were up in that damn tree again like when you were yea high, pouring out your tender feelings to the angels."

"Don't matter where I was." Daryl muttered, taking in the mess of brown glass and spilled beer, stepping over his brother to hide out in his bedroom till Merle was sober again.

"Where ya going, bro? Don't wanna spend no time with ol' Merle no more? What's the matter? It's a cold damn fucking reception after where I've been the past six months." Merle grabbed his ankle as he went past.

"I'll sit with you, Merle— in the morning, when you're sensible." He tugged his foot away but his brother held him tight.

"Naw, sit with me now, bro. We got things to catch up on."

Something warm and wet seeped through the leg of his jeans. He looked down and saw that it was blood from Merle's hand.

"Fuck, Merle, what'd you do this time?"

Daryl grabbed his brother's hand and inspected it. Merle's hand was splintered with glass from the beer bottles, which Daryl assumed he'd broke while he was still outside.

"Them bottles break easy, brother…" Merle grinned up from the floor, eyes distant. "Like fuckin' butterfly wings." Drugged. Of course Merle was high as a kite on whatever it was he'd had in the white bag. That was the only time that Merle ever got poetic, was when he was so far gone that everything was just fucking peachy to him.

He ran hot water and some peroxide over a dishrag before reaching for their daddy's Swiss army knife that still sat on the counter. He flicked the tweezers out and went to work.

Merle had this self-satisfied grin plastered all over his face. Of course he'd broken all those bottles just so Daryl would spend time with him. He bandaged the cuts anyways, sighing. Merle was singing under his breath.

"_I'm on the hiiiiighway to hell… I'm on the highway to hell…"_

Daryl wrapped the last inch of gauze around Merle's hand and tugged him up by the shoulder. Highway to hell, indeed.

"C'mon, Merle, let me put you in bed for the night." He hauled his brother's limp body off the ground and half-carried Merle into his room.

He set him carefully on the mattress and began removing his boots.

"Merle." Daryl glared at him, tossing the shoe aside.

Silence. Too stoned to understand his own name, apparently.

It had taken Merle two days to go back to being high and lazing around the house.

Daryl hated it. Granted, the only time it seemed that Merle was capable of acting like a decent fucking human being was when he was high.

But Daryl knew what he was like when he came down. Vicious, mean as a snake and twice as dangerous. That side Merle he was sick of, and loath to deal with after the relative peace of his brother's six-month possession sentence. He knew there was no way to get Merle to sober up. The world would end and the dead would walk before that happened.

"Merle!" Daryl yanked at the laces on the other boot. And then he stopped. Then, started again. Stopped. Huffed and tore the shoe off Merle's foot, chucked it against the wall. It bounced off with a thud and landed somewhere in the piles of dirty clothes that were scattered around the room.

"I should leave you, you know." He paced the length of the room. "I could do it this time. I wouldn't have to come back."

Merle said nothing. His eyes stared blankly at the rotting ceiling, his good hand flopping over the edge of the bed.

"I'm not gonna be here, you hear me? I can do what I want now. God knows I'm old enough! You can't keep me here and I won't fuckin' let you!"

He grabbed Merle's face and pulled it close to his, glaring at those empty blue eyes.

"You hear me, Merle? I ain't gonna stay here! I don't belong to you! I'm gonna leave, and I ain't gonna tell you when!"

A small, distant smile pulled the corners of Merle's lips up and for a moment his eyes focused on Daryl's. He raised his hand and tried to pat Daryl's cheek but swiped his nose instead, before sinking back onto the bed.

"Little brother," was all he said.

He wasn't sure what day of the week it was when it happened. He'd been restless, and ever since the night Merle cut his hand up he had been itching to leave. He'd spoken it aloud and now it was real. Not a dream or an excuse to sit up until the wee hours of the morning, but something that could actually, really happen. It scared him and it thrilled him at the same time. He traversed the woods for hours, going back over and over miles of forest he'd known since his childhood.

One of those days he walked out of the woods and Merle was standing behind the house, hands covered in something he thought might have been dirt. He was kneeling by the spigot and scrubbing furiously.

When he'd left the Tuckers had been fighting again, Billy shouting and swearing at Janie loud enough for half the county to hear.

Now it was silent save for the sounds of the birds and the cicadas, and the splashing of Merle washing up at the spigot.

Daryl walked past his brother and into the house. Billy Tucker was sprawled out on the sofa, too far gone to even notice Daryl enter the room and then leave.

He shut the bedroom door and locked it. Soon. It would have to be soon. But how? If he up and left right now then he knew Merle would chase after him and make his life a living hell until he came back to Harmony and their daddy's house.

He dropped down onto the creaky old bed and looked around. It was a sparse room, yes. He didn't have much in the way of personal belongings. There were his books, all five of them. As well as the carvings. He reached for his maps and spread them out over his bed, scanning the highlighted roads and the pencil scratchings on the colored paper. The creases were worn through from months of folding, unfolding and refolding, on almost a nightly basis. He pulled out a worn spiral notebook, one of the little fat ones that you could put in your back pocket and carry around with you. The pages were filled with his writing, hasty scrawlings and careful, organized plans. He wanted to go south, he knew that, to the coast.

Down the hall Merle and Billy were drinking again. He could hear the glass clink and the crack and hiss as they cracked open each new bottle. He half-expected Merle to shatter a bunch of them again just so Daryl would join in on the fun.

Daryl flipped a few pages back, ran over his notes again.

Merle and Billy kept shouting, and Daryl could have sworn he heard something break. Didn't matter though. He would be gone soon and he wouldn't have to deal with any of this again.

All he had to do was wait for Merle to fuck up and get arrested again, then he would be free and clear. Able to up and go without anything holding him back.

More shouting from down the hall. Daryl sighed and stuffed the maps and his notebooks back into their hiding place. He'd taken _Watership Down_ off the shelf, and wondered if they had any beer left in the house or if Merle and Billy had drank it all.

He tucked the book in his back pocket and ambled into the kitchen to look. Sure enough there was none, and when the back door slammed shut he heard Merle and Billy pause in their argument and then go back to it.

_Like a fucking married couple, _he thought.

He wandered across the street and into the woods beyond the Tucker house.

Just as he reached the edge of the trees he heard the sound of sticks breaking and a man's voice cursing. He stopped, turned towards the sound of the noise.

Just behind the Tucker house, a man in a polo shirt was crouching near a wide oak tree. He wiped his hands on his pockets and looked at the cell phone in his hand.

"Goddamnit," the man mumbled, "when're they gonna fucking get here?"

The man turned and saw Daryl then, standing there watching him. The man's face blanched and he backed into the tree, shaking.

"What happened?" Daryl asked. "The fuck are you?"

"J-Jane Tucker's boss. She's—I think she's dead. I saw two guys bury her and I called the cops."

Daryl chewed on his fingernail and eyed the man carefully. Merle scrubbing his hands behind the house and Billy Tucker sprawled out high as a kite on the couch made more sense now.

Then he heard the sirens.

Three cop cars and an ambulance tore down the road, bumping over cracks in the asphalt. Why was there an ambulance there, anyways? Janie was dead, that didn't matter any to hospital folk. Should have been the coroner's van or something. Besides, Daryl was pretty sure that Merle and Billy both hated hospitals with a passion—Billy because that's where he'd likely found out he'd have another mouth to feed, and then Merle because of the condescencion they felt coming from the doctors and nurses there. Daryl flashed back to when their daddy had died—Merle had been kicked out of the local hospital for being too much like Merle, though Daryl couldn't say he blamed them.

The cop cars and the ambulances stopped in the Tuckers' yard, and Daryl stepped farther back into the woods. The man in the polo nodded at him, and Daryl slipped away and out of sight.

They came for Merle the next night. Merle pounded on his door and yanked at the locked handle.

"Bro, open up, we're in some serious shit here!"

Ah. So that was why.

"What kinda shit?" Daryl looked out the window at the cops tearing down the road and filling the yard. He remembered the ambulance from yesterday, and he'd thought for a while that that was something he'd wanted to do, being a medic. Maybe he'd go to school for it when he left, if he had the money.

"Deep shit, man, worse than ever. Billy musta fuckin' ratted out t' the cops or something, told 'em I was involved."

"I'm not the one that did nothin'. You helped Billy bury Janie, not me."

"Bro, you ain't serious. Come on, all the shit I did for you, man, come on." Merle's voice modulated from demanding to pleading.

Blue and red lights filled Daryl's bedroom, and he debated letting them in through the window. Wasn't likeit was him they were here for.

There was a banging knock on the front door and shout from outside to open up.

The front door must have been kicked open, because there was a bang and then more footsteps.

There must have been a struggle in the hallway, and then Merle cursing and shouting. This followed by,

"Merle Dixon, you are under arrest for obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting third-degree murder. Anything you say can and will be used against you…"

Daryl shook his head and turned to the next page in _Watership Down. _

He assumed there were still a few cops in the house, making sure Merle didn't try to give chase. One of them knocked on the door.

"You in there, Daryl?"

Daryl looked up. He recognized that voice. Delaney, the cop he'd talked to when he'd bailed Merle out of jail the last time, or at least tried to.

"Yeah."

"You gonna try to bail him out again?"

Daryl paused.

"No, sir."

"Alright. You have a good night, son."

"Yessir."

It didn't occur to him that he could leave until the next morning when he wandered out of his room in search of breakfast.

The house was too silent, too still.

It could never be called peaceful, it never had been, but it was something like that.

At the realization, something inside his chest stirred and he felt his throat tighten, though he didn't know why.

He could leave right now, and no one would care. Get out of here, start somewhere new, get away from the rampant ghosts and horrors that had followed him throughout his life.

He wouldn't have to tell anybody. Just go and be gone.

He ate a breakfast of leftover venison and canned peas, and set about packing his things.


End file.
